Hi! Over the past weeks I have been using the new Fortnite Communities constantly with an audience of players and have recognized 5 major feedback notes that should be improved in communities is to truly thrive - each is listed below with examples that are labeled off the feedback title (images attached).
1.) Black gradient is heavily visible whenever you select a Community post that is showing in-game. This was likely done to make text visible, but it covers more than 70% of the graphic, ruining it’s visibility. The readable should be dependent on the creators, and there should not be a forced black gradient Fortnite’s side.
2.) Reaction Visibility on the in-game portion, where it is in the corner of the players screen has 0 purpose other than taking up space on the graphic. There should be an option for a creator to select “don’t show reaction number” in the Fortnite post, it ends up pushing up the title text to block a lot of the graphic. While of course, the reactions themselves are important, that number does not need to be visible in such a small space on the in-Fortnite screen.
3.) Moderators/Community Managers are NEEDED very badly. I understand this is something Epic is working on, but the sooner the better. Community Managers are vital to larger teams where the owner of the team is not available 24/7 to make posts when something goes wrong or when brand new content is active. Without community managers, the communities for many of the most-played teams in the space will be in-active and heavily delayed. Moderators are just as important as there have been a LOT of bad actors who have been posting in the replies, posting swears, nasty images, stuff that gets through Fortnite’s feed such as kids posting selfies, that shouldn’t be allowed. Once again, the Owner on large teams, that get the MOST replies, are not available 24/7 to take down the bad ones. I attached many images of replies that get through Epic’s own moderation.
4.) Replies Organization when you are part of a community that has dozens or hundreds of replies, reading them becomes impossible. The images are different sizes and can cause replies to lag. A creator wants to read through the feedback, but can’t be scrolling just to be booted back to the top. It should have a “SORT” by newest or oldest reply, allowing ease of viewing the most recent replies to understand what the community is saying soon after the fact, instead of needing to do a laggy, heavy scroll every time a new reply is made.
5.) Emojis Mess emojis are currently a mess where many of the approved emojis in the community post do not show up in the in-game version in Fortnite. Either these emojis should be approved just like they are on a community OR on the preview it should show what emojis are going to end up not showing properly in-game so the creator is able to remove them without having to go back and edit everything after the post goes live. In the attached example, the emojis are the Orange, Green, Purple, and Blue Circles to represent rarity. However, only the blue circle emoji is approved.
Let me end this off with saying Communities are a fantastic way to reach our audience. There was a bug the other day and we were able to instantly push out a note to our players so they were aware. This was the exact instant connection we needed with our audience. However, there are still many stepping stones for communities to get to be as useful and as helpful as they can be. Thank you for reading this long feedback!
